Jackfruit

After work today I took on a large dehydrating project. In the cooler were several fruits that were ripe and heading quickly to unusable: Carambolas, Mamays, and a hunk of Jackfruit. I cleared a table and grabbed my knife, cutting board, and compost bucket, and dug in.

Carambolas are Star Fruit, which require just trimming and slicing . . . I'm an old hand at them now.

Mamays, however, are bizzare! My mamays were the size of avocados, brown ugly and textured like sandy mud on the outside. Inside, the flesh is orange-pinkish. And taste? Imagine your grandmother's sweet potatoes dripping with butter, brown sugar, and marshmallows at Thanksgiving. It is one of the sweetest fruits I have ever tasted. I found that the small mamays had one seed inside, the medium had two, and the giant had four. The seeds were also sprouting on me, which happens in many ripening tropical fruits . . . they get right to business. I opened the mamays like avocados, cleaned out the pits, than sliced each half into four, each eighth in half again, scraped the flesh off the crusty skin, and set it on the rack for dehydration. Some pieces were too mushy, so I had to eat them. A few pieces were so beautiful I had to sample them as well.

And Jackfruit . . . that is a force to fear. Jack fruit is the largest fruit produced by a tree in the world, native to Asia. The sap in the stem and rind is also the stickiest in the world, being used in many glues. When you are brave enough to cut open a Jackfruit you find a hearty core from which sections of yellow fruit extend. Each section has a large seed inside, and is held in place by strands of whitish yellow fiber that really do feel and act like rubber bands. One by one I ripped out about 60 sections from my hunk of jackfruit, which was about a eighth of the original fruit we portioned and sold at market. Each section was about the size of a small apricot. I cut each section in half, removed the seed, and laid the halves on the dehydrator rack. I like jackfruit more than mamays, mostly because the flesh has a fascinating form ( like a sweet pepper, almost), is very clean, and tastes like nothing I've ever had before.

I felt like I was harvesting the whale of fruits. I even saved the seeds and boiled them in salt water until I could stick a fork through them. Margie told me that when you do this they taste somewhat like chestnuts. As I cooked the seeds I realized something . . . I don't know anything about chestnuts except that they roast on an open fire while jack frost nips at your nose. So, I guess I know what chestnuts taste like now . . . jackfruit seeds?